Ryan Prows Talks NIGHT PATROL, Vampires, and the Real-World Horrors Behind the Film

Image courtesy of Independent Film Company

By Shannon McGrew

In the vampire cop thriller, NIGHT PATROL, an LAPD officer must put aside his differences with the area’s street gangs when he discovers a local police task force is harboring a horrific secret that endangers the residents of the housing projects he grew up in.

For the release of NIGHT PATROL, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with director Ryan Prows (Lowlife) about his unique take on the vampire mythology. During their chat, they discussed everything from subverting traditional vampire tropes to tackling heavy social themes through a pulpy genre lens. 

Ryan, thank you so much for speaking with me today. It’s great to reconnect after our last chat for Lowlife. To kick things off, can you talk about what sparked the idea for NIGHT PATROL? 

Ryan Prows: While we were doing the festival run for Lowlife, the writers were like, What’s the next thing we’re going to do? Our love of horror is there, and you can see a tinge of that in Lowlife. We were like, what’s the scariest monster we can come up with, and we settled on the LAPD, and then we were off and running. 

You bring back Nicki Micheaux from Lowlife while also introducing a largely new cast, including Justin Long in a very unhinged role. Can you talk about the casting process for NIGHT PATROL and what qualities you were looking for? 

Ryan Prows: This is the third thing that Nicki and I have worked on together, and she’s like literally my favorite actor ever. From the jump, we built the character of Ayanda for her, and it was fun to stretch her with something new that gave her a different look. It was interesting with Lowlife how she plays such a different character, like a 180 basically, and everybody thought she’d be this meek, mild person, and it’s like, no, she’s just an awesome actor. We knew she could do it. We also worked with Jon Oswald again, of swastika face fame from Lowlife; we had to get him back in.

This cast was beyond my wildest dreams. Getting folks like Justin Long, Jermaine Fowler, and CM Punk to push themselves in ways I’ve never seen before. You’ve never seen Justin like this in a movie, and that was so exciting. He was even kind of apprehensive when we first met, like, 'Do you see me being able to pull this off?' And I was like, yes, you can totally pull this off! He put on some guns and became a scary, believable LAPD patrolman. [Laughs]. 

It was really cool to see it unfold, and it was almost like a magic trick watching these guys inhabit different energy. I had been working with Jermaine Fowler on a couple of different projects, but hadn’t gotten anything going yet. I met RJ Cyler on this, and when he got floated for the role of Wazi, I was like, ‘Do you think he’d actually even consider it?’ I knew if he did it, we would have the movie. He came in a couple of weeks in, when we were about to shoot; it was pretty last-minute, and he ended up putting the movie on his shoulders. 

Dermot Mulroney came in for a bit. We actually named the production “Pals” off a reference from Young Guns [Laughs]. We were just so stoked to have him, and he got a kick out of that. The movie had been together and fallen apart several times, but the cast that we got was the way that it was meant to be. It was perfect. 

Image courtesy of Independent Film Company

Ethan Hayworth is a terrifying character largely because of how casually he exercises his power. When working with Justin Long, what conversations did you have about subverting the traditional seductive vampire archetype and leaning into something much colder?

Ryan Prows: It was cool. I’ve seen him say this in interviews too, so I don’t feel like I’m speaking out of school, but like I was joking that he was a vampire traditionalist, where he was like ‘Do I get like the fangs and the contact lenses?’ And I was like, ‘No, that’s not this movie’ [Laughs]. 

Beyond us building this world of the vampires and the rules of that, I feel like it helped kind of [answer] a lot of his questions. He really dug into the character's backstory, including his military background. He brought a lot of that to bear. Though it wasn’t something we were talking a lot about, he worked on what his relationship was with his father and how that would play out in full view of the movie itself, and the trauma of whatever his childhood was, and bringing it to the forefront, and talking about all that without it being a flashback. 

He really sank in on that and focused on that. I thought it was smart how he saw the opportunity there and built that out. It wasn’t us talking through his process or the character too much; more, he wanted the physical nuts and bolts of police training and what he would do in certain situations. 

NIGHT PATROL balances a pulpy, entertaining tone with very real and heavy themes, particularly around the LAPD’s treatment of Black communities. As a filmmaker, what conversations do you hope to open up, and how do you hope audiences will receive the film? 

Ryan Prows: We really wanted to do our due diligence on the authenticity of those worlds, specifically by working with community leaders, public housing, gang and gang-intervention programs, and the Black community at large. We really wanted to drill that down. We worked with some police on the tactical nuts and bolts as well. 

Obviously, we hope it sparks, if not a conversation, at least a continuing conversation about this plight that has been going on forever and continues. We kind of refer to it in the script as this never-ending war that will not be satiated. We worked on the script 7-8 years ago, and it feels like we could have been writing it yesterday.

It’s really cool to have fun and not soapbox too much in it, but [it’s important to remember] that there are real people in this, there’s a real community that we’re talking about. There’s a real plight that we’re actually trying to shed light on, or continue to shed light on, or tell that story. The team has been so into what people get out of it, what they take away, and what they talk about. I’m excited to see what happens and what spins out of it.

NIGHT PATROL arrives exclusively in theaters January 16, 2026.